Bonkers Blog July 2013

Occasionally
people ask me how to get to a council meeting and my reply will usually include
a link to the council’s own advice. There were two such enquiries yesterday and
one came back to tell me his Sat Nav had flagged up Crayford from the council’s
website. And he is right, the wrong post code appears on many of the council’s
pages. Oh dear.

Yesterday’s meeting began in the usual way, with a lie. The new mayor was forced
to repeat the leader’s abuse of the English language by implying that recording
of meetings is welcomed but only with permission, and as every man and his dog knows, that
is absolutely never granted. The mayor dutifully waffled on about a
Constitutional Meeting in September to settle the issue. You can be sure that
they will not abide by the spirit of Eric Pickles’ guidance.

By 19:37 the meeting got down to business, two council plants, from the Young
Conservatives at a guess, asked questions referencing “the deficit left by the
last Labour Government” and “the seamless experience of residents needing to
access both Health and Social Care Services”. Exactly the sort of words you’d
expect from the average Bexley teenager.

Let’s skip over the well rehearsed politicking this allowed and get down to the
real questions. Mr. John Watson wanted to know how much Bexley ratepayers were
forced to pay via the council tax levy, to finance the Olympic Games. Deputy
leader Colin Campbell gave a clear answer; £16·8 million.

Mr. Watson
then asked councillor Campbell about his notorious
TV appearance on
7th July when, in John’s words, he “made one untrue statement after another
about Bexley residents”. Campbell wasn’t best pleased and finally came out with
“I don't read the crap on Bexley is Bonkers”, which is in fact another lie to
add to his score.

Michael Barnbrook asked a question about the council’s filming policy and
referred to the News Shopper’s poll on the subject. Nearly everyone was in favour
of filming in one form or another. Council leader Teresa O’Neill dismissed the
poll out of hand saying that only 135 people took part in it, leaving close to
300,000 people in the borough against it, or so she believed. Perhaps I should
remind her that she holds her present position because of a poll in which
only 99 people took part, 52 of them Conservative councillors more than
likely. The alternative was an elected mayor.

Mick’s supplementary question was deemed to have timed out and councillor Colin
Tandy was given the opportunity to ask how much money Boris Johnson had pumped
into Bexley in gratitude for his election five years ago. Goodness knows what
figure cabinet member Gareth Bacon came out with because firstly he was as far
away from the public gallery as he could be without being out in the Broadway, and
secondly he was three or so feet from his microphone. An inaudible mumble is all I
am able to report.

Councillor Philip Read asked for an update on the council’s financial position
which isn’t all that good. A £40 million black hole and a further £7 million cut
by government. However according to the cabinet member for finance, Colin
Campbell, all is well because he has already saved £60 million since 2006 and with his
skills, he could do it again.

Labour councillor Margaret O’Neill asked Gareth Bacon if he had decided how the
council planned to support the Mayor of London to build a bridge at Thamesmead.
I heard enough of Bacon’s mumbling to say he wasn’t going to give any support.
And that was it. Questions were out of time.

We were deprived of knowing how much traders had lost “during the tarting up of
the Broadway”. A question from councillor Alan Deadman. Councillor Stefano Borella
had a similar question in mind.

Councillor Malik had asked about Bexley processing Parking Penalties through a
court in Northampton. No answer; and councillor Seán Newman wanted to know about
parking provision in Belvedere, post Crossrail. Another one not answered.

Councillor
Ross Downing then launched into an eight minute eulogy to Queen Mary’s Hospital
apparently unaware of its downgraded status. It has no A&E or maternity unit any
more but it may eventually acquire a radiotherapy unit thereby saving Bexley
residents the trip to St. Thomas’. Having made that trip daily for eight weeks I can tell
you that Sidcup is not a lot of use to those who live in the less
salubrious outposts of the borough. Train to London or bus to St. Mary’s? No contest!

Ross Downing “hoped” in her motion that the new “Campus” would “deliver a long
term sustainable future”. Despite all the claims of a resounding success for
Bexley council they are no longer referring to a Hospital and don’t seem to be
sure of anything.

When Ross Downing had finished skating around a few realities, Labour councillor
Gill MacDonald attempted to invoke Standing Order 36. Mayor Sharon Massey made,
ignoring the lies foisted on her at the start of the meeting by her leader, her only mistake of the
evening. She hadn’t a clue what S.O. 36 was. The legal officer came to her
rescue and Massey showed her annoyance by telling MacDonald not to be so obtuse in
future. If she was proposing an amendment, say so.

The amendment expressed disappointment over the downgrade from Hospital to
Campus status and sought to “ensure a sustainable future”. No false inference that
the changes at QMH represent anything other than a reduction is services overall,
but Bexley council is never keen on admitting the truth about anything. Various
councillors got on their very high horses about Labour’s amendment.

Leader Teresa O’Neill sought to have the amendment thrown out for not being
relevant to the original motion. How could that be? Maybe she had spent too much
time in the sun. The legal officer overruled her and Teresa melted back into her
chair like a lump of lard in a hot pan.

Councillor
John Davey excelled himself. The new QMH was “not a campus, it was a
fully fledged hospital with the same services as before. The A&E was taken away
by the last Labour Government”. No reference to the fact that James
Brokenshire, the MP for the area, was elected on the promise of saving the A&E,
but failed miserably.

Warming to his theme Davey said that QMH had suffered from “totally incompetent
managers” and “Labour had turned the NHS into a tick box killing machine” and
they had “blood on their hands”. Cue widespread jeering from the public gallery.

By contrast, councillor Val Clark was a model of restraint saying only that she
was disappointed with the amendment in view of the “wonderful things [the
council] had done for us” and “the wonderful things that are being done there
[the hospital].”

Various councillors resorted to a historical slanging match with Labour going
back to the NHS’s foundation in 1948 and Chris Taylor dragging up 1979 and the
unburied dead all over again. They never tire of the political mud slinging, always preferring what they
must see as career enhancing rhetoric over something more productive.

Then Colin Campbell got back into his stride, revealing that he had been a chairman of
QMH and saw all its problems coming. He had told the Labour health
minister and Lord Norman Warner, then a senior civil servant, exactly where they
were going wrong. Interesting, plausible and almost certainly libellous with
words such as ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid’ being bandied around as freely as lies on a TV show.

Inevitably the Labour amendment was slung out but not before councillor Ross Downing
said she was “absolutely stunned” by it. I really cannot see why. Labour’s
position on the NHS doesn’t always appeal to me nationally, but locally at least,
their amendment was much better worded than Ross Downing’s original.

Finally, as far as I am concerned, because I left before the really boring stuff
began, was the Report of the Leader of the Council. The usual bragging session.

Residents are “respecting the shared space” in Broadway. Sidcup has “turned the corner”
and Waitrose is coming. It helps, she said, to have a woman leader who is a nag.

The Larner Road Estate is on the way out, Verona House will be demolished next month,
Tesco is to create a distribution centre in Erith and the
new Abbey Wood station looks
“fantastic”. She is going to make sure that the borough’s infrastructure is improved such
that residents to the south have easy access to Crossrail. That’ll be good, it will allow
Thames Bridge traffic to get to the south more easily too. Good thinking Batman.